(Credits: Fontaines D.C)
Sun 14 September 2025 10:00, UK
Fontaines DC are a band who have well and truly braved the choppy seas of the indie rock scene in recent years, making it to shore to prove that they are absolutely here to stay.
Their meteoric rise in only the space of six years, releasing music, is one that should be studied down to the finest details. There aren’t many trajectories that start by lamenting the struggles of the young person stuck inside the insular microcosm of Ireland, that then branch off to conquering enigmatic artistic concepts and the petrifying morbidity of one’s space in the entire planet – and, the point is, arrive there so quickly.
But the ethos of Grian Chatten and Co has always been fuelled by a rocketing sense of ambition, where they see no point in looking back at where they once were, because it ultimately serves no purpose in cultivating the evolving rock brand they want to become. In short, the future is always the focus. That doesn’t make them arrogant or airheaded, just a band who evidently prefer not to rest on their laurels and not rely too heavily on the successes of the past in defining them.
To that end, although every artist invariably seeks the glory of the charts as their ultimate gratification, you can imagine that Fontaines DC don’t tend to pay it much mind once the buzz of the moment has passed. Yet in terms of their third album Skinty Fia, which was released in 2022, there must be a certain level of mutual respect, what with it being their only number one record to date, and thus also making it their highest charting effort.
What did Skinty Fia represent for Fontaines DC?
The title of the album most obviously rooted Fontaines DC at the heart of the Irish canon, with Skinty Fia translating into English as “the damnation of the deer”. This evoked a notion that was mystical, alluring, and almost a little bit absurd. From there, the transition of the band from depicting Irish life into far more conceptual artistic worlds later on down the line becomes a lot clearer.
As such, Skinty Fia could very much be seen as Fontaines DC at a crossroads in the evolution of their musical brand, from which they have clearly decided to venture down arguably the more dangerous path. However, as far as the album itself goes as a standalone product, its values were plainly enchanting. Whether this shone through in some of the darkness of the lyrics or Chatten’s decision to record all the songs at night in order to give them a creeping, uncertain edge, it obviously arrived in a moment that resonated with the masses.
Shooting to number one in both the UK and their native Ireland, any other band would look at a success like Skinty Fia and, perhaps understandably, simply try to replicate its sound moving forward. But for Fontaines DC, that just wasn’t an option. If you want to keep evolving, you can’t keep rooting yourself with what you’ve done before. The next step was Romance, but there’s no telling which direction the band will venture in after that.
Related Topics